Local telephone companies have increasingly come under fire concerning their audiotex, or dial-it, services, e.g., 976 services. Consumers complain that children have too easily gained access to dial-a-porn messages. In fact, lawsuits have been filed against telephone companies related to assaults by children having extensive dial-a-porn access. There is a similar controversy over extraordinarily high telephone bills run up by some customers on live, interactive services, often called gab lines. Even calls to prerecorded messages can be expensive. The courts have stymied attempts to stop carrying dial-a-porn based on First Amendment protection. The perception left with many is that the phone company is, however grudgingly, making a lot of money off the sale of obscenity over the phone lines.
Most telephone companies do make money off 976 services, and those revenues help keep local telephone rates down. The issues raised by 976 services are likely to come up again and again as telephone companies seek to boost network usage, and thus their revenues, by introducing new services using local network technologies.
Telephone companies and regulators in many states are dealing with the problems raised by dial-a-porn and other 976 services by offering blocking services, often for charges at or below cost. Blocking allows a customer to prohibit access to any 976 or other dial-it service number for a particular phone line. This solution is, however, not totally satisfactory to 976 service providers, telephone companies or customers, because is prohibits access to all 976 services, including those that are not controversial such as time and weather services. Some companies have split their existing 976 services into two categories, moving those services that offer live conversations and adult-oriented messages onto a new three-digit prefix such as 960. However, this wastes a valuable prefix and raises definitional problems.
Two general categories of call screening services are available. The first is the call block service, where calls to a set of Numbering Plan Areas (NPAs) or office codes are not allowed, and is generally accomplished within the local switching system. The second category of service includes call screening services where a call may or may not be completed depending on the response to a query that goes to a database, where the database may be internal or external to the switching system. The switch queries the database based on the fact that a customer has dialed a specific NPA or office code or abbreviated directory number. The database may require the customer to provide a personal identification number (PIN) or authorization code prior to concluding the screening function. The first category of service is generally available to most telephone service subscribers; however the second category is not as generally available because it requires more switch capabilities than the first. The fact that a customer subscribes to a call blocking service for a specific set of NPAs or office codes prevents them from using the other call screening services of the second category based on the same set of NPAs or office codes. In addition, the known call blocking services do not provide selective blocking such that a customer can limit, for example, 976 access by their children, without blocking all access to 976 services from their line.